I say arm everyone who saw combat in WWII and send them in - seriously, there must be plenty of grandads, dads, etc about who would be up for it. Let the golden generation rise again and show us what's what.

Better still, round them all up, put them in a squalid army prison in the occupied part of another country for five years, torture them and then quietly release the ones who turned out not to have done it anyway.

I must admit the riots are a bit worrying. Today I concidered closing the front door of my shop when I popped out for a coffee. Then I thought, no. That sort of reaction just plays into the hands of the anarchists.

Probably wouldn't lose much sleep if some looters got shot but unfortunately for Dave and the Bully Boys to be able to order the army and police to shoot people on sight for nicking stuff, Dave'd have to suspend the rule of law and declare himself a dictator. I don't think he'd suit a 'tache.

Maybe people should start a fight-back. The police are allowed to use reasonable (even lethal) force to protect life and property; but so is everyone. You just have to, like the police, be able to justify it. I don't think I'd have the bottle (even if I had a broken one).

I think you're right Rikkor, about our reputation suffering. It won't be accurate though. The riots are bad, no doubt, but they are nothing compared to the LA riots for instance.

The papers in this country are obsessed with crime and very right wing. They skew the perception of crime out of proportion to the facts and so people think it's worse than it is. Compared to some other countries in Europe,but not France Germany etc. the UK is quite violent, but the crime rate in America (accounting for population) dwarfs the UK.

The murder rate in the US is many times that of Britain. If you take a city like Liverpool, for instance, that has a reputation for firearms incidents; it has only a handful of fatal shootings per year. Compare that to a city in America of similar population and similar crime reputation, such as Baltimore, they have a couple of hundred fatal shootings a year, at least.

Corrigan, some of the UK papers are right wing, some are left wing. I don't think we have an overall 'media bias', other than the BBC's brand of wishy washy liberal-elite dogma. They're still calling the looting vermin 'protesters', ffs.

Corrigan, I kind of agree. But it's a free market for the papers: people buy what they like. That's a bit sad, but there's at least room in the market for a broad spectrum. As it happens, I read the Guardian and the Telegraph mainly, and the BBC website (and the Daily Mail recently, just for ideas for satire).

The Guardian seems to have lost its way over the last 18 months, it's obsessed with minor interest women's co-operatives in countries I've never heard of. The Telegraph has moved slightly to the left, but that's not saying much at all.

I'm sure the Independent would be right up my street, if it wasn't so mind-boilingly dull to read.

When I was in Turkey they had Al-Jazeera. it was actually pretty good. They seemed to prioritize the stories according to how much human suffering was involved with each one- sort of utilitarian reporting- totally ridiculous, I know, but kind of made you think.